The present invention, in some embodiments thereof, relates to a systems and methods for analyzing computed tomography (CT) scans and, more specifically, but not exclusively, to systems and methods for detecting a fatty liver from a CT scan.
Fatty Liver, also termed Hepatic Steatosis, is relatively common. Studies report a rate of 11.4% of the adult population in the United States, and in particular, a rate of 22% among diabetic patients.
Fatty liver has been traditionally linked to alcohol consumption, and in some cases appears in patients that do not consume alcohol (e.g., nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH)). However, recent studies suggest that fatty liver is a risk factor for several key preventable diseases. For example, studies suggest that the presence of fatty liver in a person that seams otherwise healthy is associated with subclinical cardiovascular changes, elevated inflammatory markers of atherosclerosis and heart dysfunction. In patients with medical conditions, for example diabetics (type II), studies suggest that fatty liver is associated with coronary artery disease (after adjusting for confounding factors like age, gender, obesity, hypertension, smoking status and low density lipoprotein LDL).
Studies suggest that fatty liver is independently associated with increased coronary artery calcification, and that fatty liver is a strong predictor of high risk coronary artery plaque. In particular, the presence of fatty liver increases the risk for having high risk coronary artery plaque by 2.13-4.6×. In another study, people with fatty liver were nearly two times as likely to experience a cardiovascular event (i.e., heart attack or sudden death) over a mean follow up interval of 7.3 years.